


Duality

by FroldGapp



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Horror, Evil Keith (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) Whump, M/M, Mecha, Quintessence (Voltron), Robeast - Freeform, Season/Series 08, Sort Of, War, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 06:53:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16928556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FroldGapp/pseuds/FroldGapp
Summary: Keith didn't mind so much: not making it through this alive. So long as his friends were safe, his life could mean something.But when he's captured by Haggar, it seems even this will be taken from him.





	Duality

**Author's Note:**

> \-- Season 8 prediction fic --
> 
> Originally posted a week ago and deleted again for a significant re-write.
> 
> Get at me: froldgapp.tumblr.com, likewise on pillowfort!

The Marmora blade made deep scores in the red dust at Keith’s feet as he dragged it, step by labouring step, towards the bent figure of the witch, Haggar. Saliva hung in thick ropes from her open mouth and despite the scorching heat of the arid planet, her sharp breaths sputtered out in clouds with each wet exhale. Dark magic buzzed around her spasming hand; purple followed by the total absence of colour followed by brief sparks of Altean turquoise. The lights split and doubled in Keith’s vision. He blinked stinging sweat from his eyes, but the image remained distorted, the horizon lurching left and then right with each tired, uneven step. Their fight had been short but brutal. Scores of burns marked Keith’s flight suit and the skin across his cheekbones felt tight and charred. He was in no danger of bleeding out – the heat of magic made sure of that – but his heart stuttered in his chest, rapping hard against his ribcage. Where magic burned, luxite cut. The playing field was even now. She couldn't hide behind his best friend's face. He spared nothing, throwing himself at her with teeth bared again and again until she stumbled and broke beneath him. He’d buried his blade in her to the hilt, pulled it free and took a hand. It lay steaming in the dust. She hadn’t even screamed; just clawed at him with her other hand, taking half his ear with a scorching grip. It was lucky in the end. For him. Howling, his blade shrank back to its dagger form. And when the witch fell on him with black lightning gathering at her fingertips, he was close and small and fast enough to bring the business end up and into her throat. She’d exploded into smoke, vanishing, only to reappear several feet away. It took him several attempts to get to his feet, several more to put one foot in front of the other. His approach was slow and tired. Reluctant, despite her legacy of cruelty. He never wanted to be a killer.

Haggar stood in a growing pool of blood. It turned the earth to paste beneath her. ‘So, this is it,’ she said, one bright eye canting upwards from beneath a fall of white hair, ‘slain by a child.’

Keith said nothing. He didn’t know if he had the breath to speak even if he had the words. His shoulder throbbed, the blade like a rod of iron in his sweating hand. A hot wind blew across them, throwing a mist of scarlet dirt into the air. It clung to his knuckles, pulpy and raw with a savagery it seemed he'd spent all his life building, just to use on her. Keith raised the blade and drank in the sight of her weak and waiting. No, he never wanted to be a killer. But he'd do it. He'd do it a thousand times over to save the others; their lives, their hearts, their humanity.

Wind whipped around them once more. The thundering of engines shook pebbles at their feet. Twin beams of light split the air. Haggar screeched with blind relief, her single hand raising towards the harsh wash of lights behind Keith. ‘Fool!’ she cried. ‘Too slow! Too soft!’

A galra ship hung in the sky above them. The hatch was already grinding open. Keith screamed into the cloud of dust and light, spinning first towards the cruiser then back towards Haggar, blade growing in a shimmer of purple light. He brought it down in a savage arc. The moment it met the witches face, she vanished, just as a bolt of energy slammed into his back and stole all sense from him.

 

OoO

_Get to your lions!_

Those words, roared against the streaming of dark quintessence, ricocheted around Keith’s skull. He could still feel the energy, pulling from his very core. Pulling him towards her through time and space to that dry, damned planet. He followed, knowing that a moment longer in that place could have ended them all. Where were they now, the Paladins of Voltron? Safe, he hoped. Together. God, let them be well. He inhaled noisily through his nose, trying to keep himself together. The Black Lion was with them. Shiro was with them. They were in hands safer than his own. Nose and throat thick with exhaustion and cold, he dropped his head back against the seamless wall of the Galra prison and remembered. In the freezing damp of the witch’s prison, all he could do was plot and remember, plot and remember. He saw Hunk’s face leaning over him as he lay in his hospital bed at the Garrison. Hunk was angry, hands shaking. _Sometimes I think you want to die._

 _I’ve had ample opportunity, Hunk._ He’d regretted it the moment the door slammed shut, shaking a picture crooked on the wall. He pretended not to know what Hunk meant, or Shiro. But he knew. He didn’t want to die, but he had never put much stock in his living either. Better him than anyone else.

The prison door slid open and there she was, the witch. Haggar. The end of her stump already had a thick band of galra metal attached to the end, ready for a new hand, he supposed. A single thread of scarlet dissected the left side of her face. A few seconds faster and he’d have cleaved her skull in two. But she was stronger. Faster. Altean. The fight was over the moment he hesitated.

‘On your feet.’ Twin sentries marched into the cell either side of her. They heaved Keith to his feet and towards her, bionic thumbs threatening to snap his arms in two. He grimaced. The witch smiled. ‘So expressive.’ A clawed finger drew a line from his clavicle to his chin. ‘So soft.’

He drew his head back and spat. It connected with her cheek and simmered off in a matter of seconds.

She sneered. ‘Large eyes, simple and stupid. Your mother must have been a runt, spawning a harmless little kitten like you.’

‘Where’s your little kitten? Dead in the quintessence fie–’

A slap so hard it bounced Keith’s head off the sentry’s breastplate. ‘My son is a prince!’

He recovered with a few painful tests of his jaw. ‘Your son is psychopath. And gone.’

Tendrils of violet and black gathered around her darkening face. ‘Because of you.’

‘Because of _me.’_ He stared, unafraid. Her eyes, sickly with quintessence stared back. These were the same eyes that looked down on Shiro, noble and terrified, strapped to a table as his arm was sawn off. Silence swelled between them, vicious as a tumour.

‘Take him to the bay,’ she clipped and stalked down the corridor. The sentries followed in her wake, dragging Keith between them with his feet barely touching the floor.

Eventually, he was bundled into a large hangar. The lofty space was filled with the mechanical whirr of engineering bots. Druids hung in the air, sputtering their evil into the space, cloaks billowing. There was a rich, seismic throb that spoke of an engine powered by quintessence. The whole place stank of the stuff: sharp and tangy, like blood. All efforts focused on the enormous robot that stood erect in the center of the hangar. Easily the same size as Voltron, the robot gleamed in black and purple. A narrow waist, broad shoulders and long, sinuous arms drove home its galra origins. Wings of violet, transparent and webbed like a dragonfly's wings, extended from its head in two wicked fronds. In the center of its chest, was a crest of Balmeran crystals wrought in the empire’s crooked symbol. The crystals gleamed like crazed eyes. Their tune of powerful quintessence, like bells pitched oddly, splintered out and fizzed through Keith’s lungs. It was like hearing the Blue Lion again, except on acid. Him and the lion both.

He stood and gaped, breathless.

‘Come,’ snapped Haggar, as if he had a choice.

He was drawn forwards and onto a large platform that began rising with a simple gesture by the witch. The platform shunted to a stop just below the crest.

‘The _Tisiphone_ ,’ said Haggar. ‘The empire’s most powerful robeast yet.’ She placed her hand against the shining black chassis. Energy snaked across the the surface at her touch. Her smile was half-hidden by her hood; a wicked sceptre. ‘All it needs is a pilot.’

Keith was barely listening, _could_ barely listen. The energy from the robot was deafening.

‘You are a talented fighter. Galra. Human. Red and Black Paladin of Voltron. Little Blade.’ Turning back from the robot, she approached him. This close to the crystals, however, it was like watching her move through a fog. How could she stand it? How could any of them stand this kind of power? It was maddening. He swallowed back bile as she ghosted a hand across his jaw and chest, speaking slowly and with consideration, as if she was seeing him for the first time again. ‘Your abilities, together with your knowledge of Voltron will allow us to destroy the lions once and for all.’

Shook from his daze, Keith gawped at her, a belligerent laugh slipping free. ‘I won’t fight for you.’

Haggar returned with a chuckle of her own. ‘There is no need for you to fight, paladin. We need you to simply be.’

Before he could breathe or move or _act_ , a helmet was thrust onto his head from behind. Gears buzzed as it clamped solidly to his skull. He reared back with a startled cry, tumbling against the railing of the platform. Sentries grabbed him, saving him from toppling backwards over the ledge. More fastenings were extending from the helmet like an army of ants, crawling over his face and jaw, driving into his scalp and neck. He felt the sliver of cold metal slide behind an eyeball. Another snaked up his nostril, pushing and pushing until stars exploded behind his eyes.

Screaming, he was wrenched free of the railings and half-carried, half-marched towards a slowly opening hatch in the chassis. A narrow cavity, outfitted with wires and clamps awaited him. He recognised this; remembered how fragile and alone the Altean woman had looked in the Robeast that had almost destroyed Voltron and Earth in one attack.

‘No!’ he howled, kicking his legs against the side of the Robeast. ‘No! No!’ Hands took him by the ankles, others by the waist. He was turned around and pushed backwards. He scrabbled, fought, kicked, screamed, but the hands kept pushing: back, back, back towards the raging ocean of a quintessence that was suddenly, horrifyingly _hungry._ ‘Help me!’ he cried. ‘Help! Help me! Shiro!’ It was stupid. Desperate. Fuck. Fuck. ‘Help!’ he gulped. Black's ever-present hum was utterly absent in the roaring quintessence that surrounded the robot. He called to it anyway.  _Please. Black. Shiro. Please._ He couldn’t breathe. Cold cabling shot out and snapped him into place like a ravenous lizard; he a fly, harmless and helpless. He hung there, shivering and gasping. The witch approached and pressed a single, dry finger to his trembling lips.

‘I will so enjoy watching you murder your friends, Keith Kogane, Paladin of Voltron.’

‘No,’ Keith choked. ‘No, no, no.’

‘Long live Emperor Zarkon. Long live Prince Lotor.’

‘Please,’ he sobbed. ‘No.’

‘Vrepit Sa!’

The hatch slammed shut to a searing wash of light.


End file.
